THE SPIRITUAL TASKS
OF THE RUSSIAN EMIGRATION

(FROM THE EDITOR)

The Russian dispersal represents a quite exceptional and singular
phenomenon in history. As regards its dimensions, this phenomenon
can only be compared with the Jewish Diaspora. Outside the native-land,
the Rodina, there have been displaced millions of Russian people
of very diverse social segments, professions, intellectual trends.
In its composition the Russian emigration is very complex and
very different from the emigration in the era of the French Revolution.
To it belong the frightened and angry common folk. But to it belong
likewise our highest cultural stratum, the blossom of Russian
culture, of Russian writers, scholars, painters, artists. An enormous
number of Russian youth, having passed through the Civil War,
is dispersed throughout all the world, to work in the factories,
and to study in the highest institutions of learning in Western
Europe. It is difficult to imagine for oneself a greater historical
tragedy, than that, which the Russian people experience. Tremendous
Russian energies have been rendered as though unnecessary for
Russia, not, certainly, for the eternal Russia, but for the Russia
of the present day. Christians, however, should not think that
the lot, dealt them in life, is by chance and without meaning.
It is not merely by the will of the Bolsheviks, but also by the
will of Godís Providence that the Russian people have been dispersed
across all the face of the earth. With this is connected not only
the suffering and torment of being torn from oneís native-land,
but also a positive mission. But has the Russian emigration been
conscious of this mission? This mission cannot consist of some
arrogant attitude of superiority over those, who have remained
inside Russia, in the cultivation of a sense of malice and vengeful
spite, in petty political hostility, based on fictions. This mission
consists first of all in spiritual tasks, in the gathering and
forging out of spiritual powers, the spiritual surmounting of
a maliciously vengeful attitude to the tribulations sent down
by God. The Russian people have been torn away by force from the
good life, they have been freed from the enslavement to material
objects, and by the will of God they pass through a severe school
of ascesis, which they did not want to enter under their own will.
But it is a relief for them, the possibility to return to a spiritual
life, to the inner man, to get down to the depths, to love the
other world moreso, than this world. We all bear the consequences
of our sins and we can all hope at a better life, grounded in
repentance. No one can regard himself without sin and make an
innocent expression of face, seeing all the evil of life only
in others. Such -- is not a Christian attitude towards life. The
Russian emigration is not comprised of guiltless people, as distinct
from the guilty, dwelling in Russia. It is comprised of the guilty,
and its positive spiritual mission can be fulfilled in the world
only by a consciousness of its own culpability. "Rightists" ought
to be aware of this no less, than the "leftists". Russian cultural
society, now recoiling in terror at the anti-Christian form of
the Russian Revolution, betrayed a thousand times over its Christian
legacy and little thought about the realisation of Christian truth.
The path, however, of going contrary to the Christian legacy,
the path of negating the Christian truth, now leads to its logical
end in Bolshevism. But it was not the Bolsheviks that began it.
We all, rightists and leftists, began it and however remotely
have had an hand in this path. The evil began with those who were
the lords of life, and was only brought to its logical end, by
those who rose up against them. And the movement against Bolshevism
can be based on principles, just as opposed to the Christian legacy,
just as scornful to the truth of Christ, just as covetous, as
there is in Bolshevism itself. And therein will be no blessing
of God upon this movement. The malice, the hatred and vengefulness
is all that same poison as exists in Bolshevism, whatever the
lofty words these conditions might veil themselves under. The
task likewise of the cultural segment of the Russian emigration
is a spiritual task of an awareness of this truth, that there
is only one movement possible against the kingdom of the Anti-Christ,
and in which resides the power of God, this -- is the movement
of the realisation of the truth of Christ and inspired by it.
"This sort [of devil] is cast out only by prayer and by fasting"
(Mt. 17: 21). The consciousness of this religious truth does not
mean the preaching of passivity. On the contrary, this is the
call to an utmost of spiritual activity, which will lead also
to activity both societal and historical. But the societal activity
is sterile and empty, if it does not issue forth from spiritual
activity, from a transformation of spirit, from a finding of spiritual
power. The evil powers, acting in the Revolution and accumulated
over the course of the old Russian life, can be overcome only
by the new and creative powers of good, revealed as a result of
lived-through experience.

The Russian emigration, faced with a prolonged dwelling outside
its native-land, is threatened by disintegration, by de-nationalisation,
the loss of its connections with Russia, with the Russian land
and the Russian people. Therein each can be transformed into a
split-off atom, concerned exclusively with the maintainance of
his own life. Only by an exertive spiritual life, only by fidelity
to the idea of Russia can the Russian dispersal preserve itself,
as a single Russian people, organically connected with the Russian
people, so as to preserve in Soviet Russia the fidelity to the
same idea. The schism-like split between the emigres and Russia,
resulting under Bolshevism, has to be overcome. On this depends
the future of the Russian people. The processes, transpiring in
the emigration, of themselves have no significance, they have
significance only in an organic connection with those processes,
which transpire in Russia itself. And the split ought first of
all to be overcome spiritually, religiously. Its surmounting signifies
a surmounting of the emigre psychology. On purely political grounds,
it only deepens the split between the Russians abroad and the
Russians in Russia, and within the emigration itself it but augments
the hostility. There is an oneness that can be posited spiritually
and Russians mustneeds seek it around the Orthodox Church. Only
through the Orthodox Church can the emigration sense itself as
one with the Russian people. Only in the religious stirring do
the Russians in Russia and the Russians abroad comprise one spiritual
organism. It is from whence only that there can begin both a national
unification and restoration and perhaps be prepared a brotherly
meeting of the severed segments of the Russian people. The Russian
idea always was a religious idea. This is the idea of Holy Russia,
and not the imperialistic idea of Great Russia. And here is why
the task of the best part of the Russian emigration involves most
of all the area of spiritual culture and religious life. The Russian
emigration is called to preserve the legacy of Russian spiritual
culture, and to the extent of its powers, to facilitate its creative
developement. For it, however, the political task is secondary
and derivative, subordinate to the spiritual-religious task. The
political changes will transpire first of all in Russia itself,
the action has to manifest itself there. The Russian people, having
surmounted the Revolution inwardly, will decide its own fate,
and nothing on the outside will change that. Politics is action,
and not mere word-play nor doctrinal rhetorics. Politics presupposes
action amidst its own people. After the Revolution, politics can
only be post-revolutionary, not pre-revolutionary. And we would
not at all deny such a politics. But in an era of crises and historic
upheavals, when the old order of life stands destroyed, when nothing
remains of the old social structure of society, the restoration
of life ought to begin with the restoration of the spiritual organism
of the people, with the change and restoration of the religious
beliefs of the people. In Russia everything will be determined
by the beliefs of the people, by its spiritual condition. It is
utopian, mere vapid and unreal dreams, to build societal and political
plans, whilst ignoring and scorning the societal and the peopleís
psyche, the spiritual drift, the defining beliefs. In Russia first
of all is faced the colossal task of spiritual enlightenment and
the enlightening of those fallen away under the old ways, getting
the masses of the people to rouse itself into tempestuous activity.
There mustneeds be spiritual preparation for this. And with this
undertaking is bound up the first task of the emigration. Only
abroad can the Russian spiritual culture express itself and be
at freedom to gather up its creative religious powers for the
coming national-cultural rebirth of Russia. And these powers should
focus first of all in the youth, who thirst for a new Christian
life, and not merely for the restoration of the old sinful life.
The religious life in modern Russia is an exploit and heroism,
it is more intense a thing there, than it is abroad. There, and
not here, appear the confessors and martyrs. There the assertion
of oneís spiritual freedom is already uniquely a martyrdom. A
free breath there, contending against the poisons, presupposes
a great exertion of spirit. And in reviewing the martyrs, in passing
by the people making the effort, it befits the emigration, in
aspiring to live a worthy life, to lift the hat and lowly bow
the head. But in Russia at present the religious, the philosophic
and scientific thought cannot express itself, there cannot be
a totally free literature nor organs of print, and organisations
of Christian youth are impossible. These tasks rely upon the emigration.
And up to the present these tasks have been insufficiently met.
The emigration has been hindered from fulfilling its authentic
task by a false consciousness of itself as separate from the present
day Russian nation, or even as the sole genuine Russian nation,
transplanted abroad.

There is still another mission, of which the Orthodox portion
of the Russian emigration has not been sufficiently aware. It
is not by chance that Russian Orthodox people have been brought
into physical contact with the Western world, with the Christian
West. Orthodoxy has an universal significance and it cannot continue
to settle into a nationally-restrictive and isolated condition,
it ought to become a spiritual force, active in the world. Russians,
remaining faithful to the faith of their fathers, are compelled
to live amidst a foreign world, or a world godless and irreligious,
or a world that is Christian, but confessing a different Christianity.
And there is possible a different setting in attitude towards
Western Christianity. Russian Orthodox people of course can remain
in a condition of isolation and restrictedness, they can assert
their Orthodoxy timidly and with suspicion, everywhere seeing
danger and temptation, refusing any spiritual togetherness or
collaboration with the Western spiritual world, with people of
other Christian confessions. This is a relict experience of the
old psychology, quite unsuitable for our era, a psychology of
weakness and ugly self-obsession, a psychology of relying on the
outside help of a state power. On the soil of this psychology
sprouts forth mistrust and suspicion, destructive to spiritual
health, for creative spiritual life. We can no longer remain shut-in
and isolated, nor can we still employ state protection. By the
will of Godís Providence we have been sent forth into a community
with the Western spiritual world, and we ought to strive to get
to know it and enter into brotherly relations with it, associating
with it in the name of the struggle against anti-Christian forces.
But there can also be the bad in this relationship. Russians can
gradually lose the uniqueness of their own spiritual type, they
can be torn away from their own national-religious roots, can
dissolve away into Western life, having adapted, entering into
compromise. Such a sort of setting is altogether unacceptable
for us and nothing further need be said of it. But there is still
a third setting, the solely correct one. Russian people can remain
true to their religious type, they can assert their faith, boldly
and openly conscious of its universal significance and from the
depths of their spiritual type, from the depths of their faith,
and can enter into community with the Christians of the West,
can collaborate with them, and they can establish closer brotherly
relations between Christians of all the confessions. East and
west cannot remain restricted and isolated. And this mustneeds
be understood not in the sense of an abstract inter-confessionalism,
creatively sterile, but in the sense of the setting of a great
spiritual unity from the depths of each confession, through a
stirring movement in the depths, vertically and not horizontally,
not in the external spatial oecumene. Western Europe ceases to
be a monopolistic culture, and in it there is to be sensed exhaustion.
And the East, the Russian East first of all, herein assumes a
greater world significance than it had earlier.

The journal "Putí" ["The Way"] strives to be an expression of
the spiritual and religious tasks of the Russian emigration. This
is an Orthodox organ, and together with this, it is connected
with the traditions of Russian creative religious thought. The
names of Khomyakov, Dostoevsky, Vl. Solovíev, Bucharev, V. Nesmelov,
N. Fedorov are near and dear to the directors of this journal.
The idea of Christian freedom was stressed by the Russian religious
thought of the XIX Century and we ought to be faithful to it.
We have to struggle for the dignity and freedom of the human spirit,
which at present is being trampled underfoot. And it represents
a struggle on two fronts for the journal "Putí": against the tendencies,
which think to find spiritual creativity in a splitting with the
Orthodox Church, and against the tendencies, which are hostile
to spiritual creativity and exclusively desire reaction and restoration.
We proceed from the awareness, that the old world of "modern history"
has been destroyed and that a new era in world history has begun.
Within Orthodoxy there can be creative currents of rebirth and
renewal, answering new inquiries. The position of the Orthodox
Church in the world has acutely and catastrophically changed,
and before stand new tasks. A new make-up of the Orthodox soul
is taking shape, more active, responsive, creative, more manly
and fearless. In Russian religious thought there have been brought
forth creative ideas, which can make for a Christian renewal.
There were problems sharply posited, to which there was given
still no clear churchly answer, problems about man and the cosmos,
problems of the attitude of Christianity towards culture and history,
problems of the Christ-ifying of life. There exists an exclusive
understanding of Christianity, as a religion of personal salvation,
the denying of a creative attitude towards questions of life both
of all mankind and all the world, the lack of resolution in a
Christian spirit of questions of culture and the social order,
and this manifests itself as a source of the terrible disorders
in the Christian world. In the religio-churchly life of the Russian
emigration there is a reactionary-restoration current, which as
it were desires to return the Church to its old position, forgetting,
that the Church was suppressed and degraded, that the relationship
between church and state was intolerable for the Christian consciousness,
that our old way of life was moreso pagan, than Christian, that
much in our society was very little Christian. This current looks
upon the Church, as upon a tool for a state and social restoration.
We ought with all our powers to strive for the rebirth of Russia,
but that its rebirth be in the truth of Christ. It would be madness
to re-establish the falsehood and injustice, for which we suffer
the chastisement. In the position of Christianity prior to the
catastrophe there was injustice and falsehood, also which evoked
the catastrophe. Capitalistic society is no less anti-Christian,
than is Communistic society. The struggle of bourgeois society
and socialistic society is not a struggle of good and evil, --
in it is apparent only two forms of evil. The genuine struggle,
however, is the struggle of Christ and the spirit of the Anti-Christ,
which manifests itself externally in the polar opposite forms.
Both the Russian people and all the world, with an unprecedented
alacrity, have to face up to the tasks and seriously before the
end to comprehend and accept Christianity, to realise it actively
and actually in life, not only personal, but social. Upon the
ruins of bourgeois society there needs to be built a Christian
society, there needs to be used this favourable position, rather
than reviving the disintegration of the anti-Christian old society.
If however we fail to realise Christian truth in life, then the
anti-Christian and the Anti-Christís principle will be all more
and more victorious. In this is the meaning of our epoch. There
mustneeds be an active opposition to the evil of the Anti-Christ,
but it must be a Christian opposition and in the name of the Kingdom
of Christ. The journal "Putí" to the extent of its abilities will
assist in the opening up of this awareness within the Russian
emigration.

The path of thought leads us into the path of life, as one of
its defining moments. Knowledge assumes a creative role in life.
The advancement of intellectual and spiritual culture for Russians
is necessary in this era of overall confusion. Otherwise they
will remain unarmed for the struggle, which transpires in the
world. For the struggle in the modern world there is necessary
a perfecting of intellectual and spiritual capabilities. And we
desire to assist in the working out of this capability. The masses
of the people are falling away from the Christian faith and from
the Church, they pass through a sort of quasi-enlightening, through
atheism and nihilism, whereas the Intelligentsia and the upper
cultural stratum are returning to the Christian faith and the
Church. This alters the style of Orthodoxy. It ceases to be cringing,
and primarily peasant-like. Answers are needed upon the most complex
mental questionings, upon most delicate matters of thought. And
we intend to the extent of our abilities to give answer to these
questionings, to assist in the advancement of religious awareness.